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James Whitcomb Riley - I Smoke My Pipe
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I can`t extend to every friend
    In need a helping hand--
No matter though I wish it so,
    `Tis not as Fortune planned;
But haply may I fancy they
    Are men of different stripe
Than others think who hint and wink,--
    And so--I smoke my pipe!

A golden coal to crown the bowl--
    My pipe and I alone,--
I sit and muse with idler views
    Perchance than I should own:--
It might be worse to own the purse
    Whose glutted bowels gripe
In little qualms of stinted alms;
    And so I smoke my pipe.

And if inclined to moor my mind
    And cast the anchor Hope,
A puff of breath will put to death
    The morbid misanthrope
That lurks inside--as errors hide
    In standing forms of type
To mar at birth some line of worth;
    And so I smoke my pipe.

The subtle stings misfortune flings
    Can give me little pain
When my narcotic spell has wrought
    This quiet in my brain:
When I can waste the past in taste
    So luscious and so ripe
That like an elf I hug myself;
    And so I smoke my pipe.

And wrapped in shrouds of drifting clouds,
    I watch the phantom`s flight,
Till alien eyes from Paradise
    Smile on me as I write:
And I forgive the wrongs that live,
    As lightly as I wipe
Away the tear that rises here;
    And so I smoke my pipe.
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